Resilient floor matting has been used extensively for thousands of years. Fiber matting was first used, then came carpeting. Between the 1900's and 1960's, canvas mats filled with batting were commonly used for gymnastics and tumbling. In the last two centuries, floor matting of cork has been extensively used to absorb the pounding forces of the feet on hard surfaces. In the last 30 years mats prepared from polymeric foam has become common. For purposes of convenience, such as retail sale, packaging, transportation, and the like, the mats are sold in roll form, such a 4′×8′ sheets, or as tiles measuring anywhere from 6″×6″ up to 3′×4′. Some floor matting tiles, especially large dimension tiles, are merely laid down with adjacent tiles butting up against one another. For smaller tiles, there is an interlocking arrangement. Some tiles have a periphery of interlocking teeth which dovetail with the peripheral teeth of adjoining tiles. Prior art tiles are one color and/or have a textured surface on one side only. The bottom surface is normally smooth and flat, and the top surface is smooth and flat or textured, depending upon the taste of the user. The prior art has attempted to make matting with one color on one side and another color on the other side, but without success. Delamination of two or more mat layers can be a problem especially with use or when there are temperature changes, such as from ambient temperature to below freezing or from ambient temperature to an elevated temperature. In addition, delamination can occur when the mats are subject to physical forces, such as with tumbling, or gymnastics, or the dropping of articles, such as weights, on the matting. In addition, running and stopping or quick turns on matting, applies shear forces to each of the layers which can lead to delamination of the layers.
With use, the working surface or top surface of the floor matting can become disfigured with stains from dirt, paint, ink, and the like, physically disfigured can cause cuts, abrasions, and indentions in the floor matting. The floor matting can be reversed but this can be unsatisfactory if the bottom surface of the matting is smooth and the top surface of the matting is textured, or vice versa. When it is reversed, the textured side becomes the base surface and the original base surface becomes the top working surface. The new working surface will not be textured.
Resilient matting, such as foam elastomeric matting, is normally anywhere from ⅜″ to ¾″ in thickness and around 2′×2′ square. To cover a room 10′×10′, 25 mat tiles are normally required.
Solid resilient matting can be quite heavy and voluminous when stacked. Polymeric foam elastomeric resilient matting is relatively light, but it is also voluminous when stacked. For example, matting (2′×2′×½″) for 12′×12′ coverage when stacked forms a cube 2′×2′×1½′. For retail sales, matting can take up a great deal of retail space especially when several textures and several colors are being offered. For example, if four colors are available and four textures are available, the retail outlet has to carry sixteen varieties of floor matting. The number of varieties could be cut in half by having both surfaces of the matting textured in different textures and/or different colors. Thus, if four colors are offered in four textures for polymeric foam matting, the matting on one surface having one color and one texture and the other surface having another color and another texture, only eight varieties of matting would be required at the retail outlet.